


Smoke White

by jongdae



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - MAMA (Music Video), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 17:12:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4444880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jongdae/pseuds/jongdae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyungsoo is prompted to think back on their relationship as he watches Chanyeol smoking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke White

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by Mona (@byunberry_ on twitter) who thought pcy would be "hot af with a cig, smoking"  
> originally posted on LJ, revised April 14 2015.

“You're taking a smoke? It's cold outside.”

“Yeah. Just a quick one.”

 

“We should get a flat with a fireplace,” Kyungsoo suggests idly as Chanyeol slides the door open to the balcony and takes a step out, a cigarette pack in his right hand. 

“You know. Make actual use of your power,” Kyungsoo continues.

“Yeah. Heating is expensive as hell,” Chanyeol replies absent-mindedly, then frowns. “You didn't need to put it that way though,” he eyes Kyungsoo. 

The shorter man just smiles. Much to the taller’s surprise. 

Chanyeol grins back widely, doesn’t take his gaze off Kyungsoo, casually shakes a single cigarette out of the box, leans back lightly against the tall rails because he doesn’t want to turn away from Kyungsoo’s smile. It’s rare for the smile to stay for more than a brief moment, too.

 _Yeah, it's definitely cold outside_ , he thinks, but there's not much of a breeze, so it’s bearable. He puts the thin cigarette in his mouth, puts away the box, puts away some thoughts, stretches.

Kyungsoo sharply turns his back to the balcony. 

Chanyeol can tell the smile is gone.

“I've been cutting down,” Chanyeol assures, cig still hanging unlit from his mouth. “Don't worry, ‘Soo.”

 

Chanyeol could have been a vigilant hero, a troublesome villain, a practiced pyromaniac, a blazing sun, an outstanding kitchen stove for all he knew, but instead Chanyeol is just a very mundane chain smoker, living off not needing to pay natural gas bills, not needing, more importantly, to pay for lighters. 

Chanyeol works as a freelance _something_ , works only when Kyungsoo threatens him to, really. Works when the fire in him is cooler, calmer, disciplined, tamed. Works when he doesn’t wake up evaluating his self-worth at about minus ten on a scale of one to ten. 

“I don't particularly care if you want black lungs or sad health,” Kyungsoo answers flatly, settling more comfortably on the sofa, reading a One Piece volume he had borrowed from Jongin, a neighbour. 

Chanyeol brings up his left hand to shield the cigarette, flicks his right thumb and middle finger, lights his cigarette with the small flame they produced. He shifts his attention to the flail sliver of fire that stood atop his finger. Aloft, levitating, surreal, familiar. 

He takes a breather. The air is cold. He exhales, runs a hand in his hair. The white smoke scatters and dissipates to his right.

“Come on ‘soo, I know you've been throwing away my cigs,” Chanyeol says nonchalantly. “You totally care. You _particularly_ care.”

Kyungsoo puts down his book. 

“I was starting to think you hadn't noticed,” he says, point-blank. 

“Sometimes, I wish you wouldn't think of me as that dense.” 

Chanyeol inhales subtly, exhales slowly, watches the smoke mix with winter fog. He waits for Kyungsoo to respond.

 

 

“Can't you praise me once in a while?” Chanyeol urges childishly after a good pause. His cigarette is almost finished.

“You smell like shit right now,” Kyungsoo proposes, “close the door, please.”

“But then I can’t hear you,” Chanyeol whines playfully. Kyungsoo stands up, walks over and closes the door without further ado. The smoker crushes the cig bottom on the frozen rail as he watches. Kyungsoo smiles briefly, and perhaps a bit slyly, but Chanyeol doesn't really see it because of the reflection in the glass pane.

Then Kyungsoo mouths words, but Chanyeol doesn't really catch any of them, so he slides the door open to the shorter man's dismay.

 

Kyungsoo backs up a step or two as Chanyeol walks into the warm flat.

“I will not hesitate to strangle you if you're bringing that foul scent in.”

“You do realize I need to get in at some point in time though,” Chanyeol refutes easily. He adds:

“Besides, _you_ threw away my chocolate-scented cigs. This could have been easily resolved. You _do_ like the scent of chocolate?” He catches Kyungsoo's forearm before the other can back away too far.

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “Chocolate-scented smoke? No. Also, considering there’s a much easier way to 'resolve' this, I’ll continue throwing your cigs away whenever I find a stash.”

Chanyeol hums, pulls Kyungsoo closer and then dips his head down to push their foreheads together.

“You stink, Chanyeol, let go. I'm not cooking you anything if you don't let me go.”

“Soo, you cook with my fire.”

“I'll pay for the gas bill this month you dipshit. Let go.”

“Come on, we agreed we'd save as much money as possible.”

“So you can go buy chocolate-scented cigarettes instead and burn them? No.”

“Technically, you throw them out before I can even burn them.”

“Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol intertwines their fingers, and Kyungsoo watches their hands. 

 

“I'm trying,” Chanyeol mutters gently. Kyungsoo doesn't look up. 

 

 

“I know,” he then whispers back.

 

Chanyeol lifts Kyungsoo's chin up a bit with a hand. “Can I?”

Kyungsoo glares at him. “Are you kidding? No. Ten mouthwashes first, ‘Yeol. You know the rules.”

Chanyeol tries imitating the whining of an upset puppy, but it doesn't really work with Kyungsoo. The tall lanky man plants a quick kiss on the other’s forehead instead, and Kyungsoo pushes him away with a frown.

“Did you _especially_ want me to kill you today?”

“Ki _ss_ , Soo,” Chanyeol tries to correct, “never ki _ll_.”

 

 

Kyungsoo never lets Chanyeol kiss after he has smoked. It’s been set as the rule of thumb for the seven – no, for the nearly _eight_ years they have known each other.

 

 

 

They met back in high school in the dullest ways.

Chanyeol had a problem with a recycling bin catching fire, and Kyungsoo had always been the more levelheaded classmate, had eased the fire with a nearby extinguisher in a matter of less than two seconds. 

They had barely exchanged words, smiles, acknowledgements of existence, but Kyungsoo remembered that their hands had touched, albeit really briefly, near ephemerally. 

And Kyungsoo remembered the touch as more than just a metaphorical burning sensation. In retrospective, Kyungsoo thinks it had been such a literal burn it prompted him to think a bit more – so-to-say – _deeply_.

Two days after the incident, they were both put in charge for cleaning duties.

“You can summon fire,” Kyungsoo said, out of the blue, that day, when they were the last to leave the classroom.

“W-what are you talking about?” Chanyeol played dumb, but his trembling fingers were turning dangerously crimson, and the tip of the broom he was holding was reddening. 

“Can you control it?” Kyungsoo inquired quietly while they were standing only half a meter apart.

Chanyeol didn’t respond for a while, and Kyungsoo understood the silent reply, took Chanyeol’s broom away from him.

“I’m trying though,” Chanyeol then added, despondent, voice falling a few notches.

There was a pause in between.

“Well, let’s just say you gotta work on hiding it too,” Kyungsoo hummed softly. 

 

 

 

The first kiss was sometime during the first year of college. 

Chanyeol had not picked up smoking yet. Essays and exams were piled on top of their heads but somehow they found time to pick up a cute banter-y crush on each other.

“For my own safety,” Kyungsoo had stopped Chanyeol’s lips with two fingers. “Since you kind of literally fire up when you’re nervous… I need to know if you might not spit fire while we’re about to kiss.”

Chanyeol looked Kyungsoo warily in the eye. “Soo, this is a trick question, isn’t it?”

“You mean you _don’t_ know if you would spit fire or not,” Kyungsoo whispered with a frown. Chanyeol pressed his lips into a straight line.

“Does this mean we can’t kiss, we’re _not ever_ going to kiss?” Chanyeol pouted. “Soo, I swear to god I’ve never spat fire in my life. Please please please _please_ I won’t spit fire and I really need this, I’m about to cry if we’re not doing thi—”

 

Kyungsoo kissed Chanyeol so gently the latter would have probably spat fire on the spot and broken promises because Chanyeol felt extremely warm and lava-bubbly inside. He pushed Kyungsoo away abruptly but instead of fire he just sort of spits carbon dioxide into the air, chokes on it, and Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow.

“It’s nice to know you’re not a dragon,” the shorter boy comments as he pats the other’s back.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo _probably_ knows why Chanyeol had picked up smoking. 

As he listens to the gurgles coming from the washroom, he absent-mindedly flips a page in the manga volume he’s holding. He thinks back on kisses before they had been tainted with the bitter flavor, but he can’t remember much of them.

Had they been sweet? He first asks.

Had they been better? He redirects the question.

Had _he_ been better? He finalizes the problem.

 

Kyungsoo cocks his head, bites his lower lip mildly. 

 

 

 

The first time they had sex was not too long after that. 

Chanyeol had picked up smoking somewhere between the kiss and the sex. Kyungsoo did not particularly care back then because he had to admit that sometimes the smoke that came off Chanyeol’s skin smelled so pleasantly familiar it made him forget about warning the taller boy about black lungs, made him forget about the skull insignia on the black packs of thin cigarettes. 

The smoke was part of Chanyeol, Kyungsoo thought. 

 

Kyungsoo slowly eased down onto Chanyeol, their hands clasped tightly together, fingers intertwined to the point that they did not know which was whose. Over their fingers they saw the red and cyan lights of passing cars, traffic lights and midnight moons that intruded from between the curtains. 

Chanyeol had prepared him, fingered him slowly, had been too kind for someone whose flames were bursting at its seams, Kyungsoo thought, had probably not stretched him enough, but he liked the burn.

“Nnnghh,” Chanyeol groaned, his chest heaving, up, down, up. And his eyes half-lidded, half-lost in a locked gaze with Kyungsoo’s.

“Is it me,” Kyungsoo muttered in between light huffs as he had finally engulfed the whole of Chanyeol’s cock, “or are you actually burning up in a way that might not be safe.”

Chanyeol scoffed. “Is this a trick questi—”

Kyungsoo started moving up, and then he slammed down, and Chanyeol let out a groan filled with gratification followed by huffs that slowly turned ravenous. Kyungsoo repeated because he needed an encore of that, and Chanyeol felt as if he had been shot out into cosmos, adrenaline building up in his chest, mind filled with flames in empty space.

“Oh god, Soo, ugh, fuck, ‘soo, shit, augh, yes, yes, _yes_ , ‘soo, nnnn, s-so— augh, g-good…”

Kyungsoo built up a rhythm at first, but he changed so much through it, slowed down, eased up, quickened at Chanyeol’s command for once, twice at most, because he realized how Chanyeol liked the tease, liked that Kyungsoo only half-obeyed. Their hands loosened sometimes and Chanyeol would slip down to give Kyungsoo’s dick a few strokes, almost as an exchange, a concept Kyungsoo thought was too cute, too Chanyeol.

“You d-don’t need to,” Kyungsoo muttered, leaning forward a tad, but instead Chanyeol tried harmonizing his pace with Kyungsoo’s without further reply.

“What if I come f-first… I want to come t-together—nnn— y’know,” Chanyeol explained.

Kyungsoo laughed. “What kind of romantic crap have you—nnnnf—been watching?”

“J-just the u-usual kind,” Chanyeol rasped. He sounded like he was about to cry because he couldn’t understand how Kyungsoo could talk in this state with just a tiny stutter. Chanyeol sat up, put his hands on Kyungsoo’s hips, moved them up across the smaller boy’s smooth skin, feeling the other shiver. 

“ _Chanyeol_ ,” Kyungsoo said inaudibly before slamming down harder, and this time making sure he was hitting his sweeter spot. He lifted up again, some precum sliding down the rest of Chanyeol’s cock.

 

 

“A-are you close,” Chanyeol asked meekly, shoving harder in tune with Kyungsoo.

“Nnn,” Kyungsoo could barely reply. “Yeah.”

Chanyeol thrust faster and tried looking for the other’s spot. He planted butterfly kisses alongside Kyungsoo’s collarbone, sometimes pausing to whiff at the other’s scent because it made him feel, oddly, _happy_.

 

He came soon after feeling Kyungsoo’s smell mixed with his own, smoky one. Kyungsoo followed suit just around the same time. They collapsed a bit heavily, as if gravity had just been switched on, but they both felt lighter, more relaxed. 

They slowly regained their breaths, and Chanyeol flung an arm over Kyungsoo, silently demanding a cuddling session to which Kyungsoo just responded with resting his head against the other’s shoulder. 

 

“I’m so glad my dick didn’t shoot fire,” Chanyeol had commented idly, a lazy relieved smile across his face. 

Kyungsoo glared at him for several seconds but then smiled back, hoping that it was too dark for Chanyeol to see because he was back against the only source of dim light in their small dorm room. 

 

 

 

“Ten mouthwashes, check,” Chanyeol announces after coming out of the bathroom with a grin of blindingly-white teeth. (In reality though, ten mouthwashes really meant two instead because instructions won’t allow more than two per day.) 

“I don’t owe you anything,” Kyungsoo deadpans.

Chanyeol whines. “Oh come _on_.”

Kyungsoo shrugs. “This is a good chapter, let me finish.”

Chanyeol plops next to Kyungsoo, looks over at the page. “Oh,” he realizes, “You’re not even pass Ace’s—”

 

 

Kyungsoo kisses Chanyeol and tastes mint-scented smoke. 

 

 

“No spoilers you shit,” Kyungsoo mutters affectionately, on an alto notch.

 

 

“Wow,” Chanyeol blanks out for a few moments. Then he frowns. “I can’t believe you.”

 

He pokes Kyungsoo on the shoulder, then grabs it and almost shakes Kyungsoo several times in a cajoling way.

“I can’t believe you,” Chanyeol says, smiles, then places his head on Kyungsoo’s shoulder and reads along, giving up.

 

They finish the chapter in sync, and Chanyeol places a quick kiss on Kyungsoo’s left cheek, returns to standby at the other’s shoulder, eyes wide with some sort of anticipation.

“Chanyeol.”

 

“Yeah?”

“Why do you smoke?”

Chanyeol falls silent. It’s, decidedly, a very sudden question.

 

“I don’t know.”

“Sure,” Kyungsoo says.

“Okay, I do, but I don’t know how to word it,” Chanyeol admits.

 

 

“You’re scared.”

“Maybe?”

Kyungsoo gives Chanyeol a few more seconds. “Right, yeah, you’re right.”

“You’re scared of not being able to contain it.”

Chanyeol rubs the back of his neck. 

 

Kyungsoo kisses Chanyeol’s temple.

“Remember that day when we first met?”

“The recycling bin disaster you put out in less than a blink of an eye?”

“Exactly.”

Chanyeol waits but Kyungsoo doesn’t continue.

“Exactly what?” Chanyeol asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

“… For every disaster you’ll cause I’ll … be around to put out your stuff, I’ll be around no matter what,” Kyungsoo words it out as if explaining a convoluted metaphor in layman terms, and he sort of flushes.

 

“That’s probably the sweetest thing you’ve ever said,” Chanyeol replies, maybe or maybe not at the brink of bursting into tears.

“What are you talking about,” Kyungsoo snarls, “I’m always sweet.”

Chanyeol grins widely. 

 

There’re sunrays beaming in, and Kyungsoo watches Chanyeol squint his eyes.

 

“I like you, Chanyeol.”

 

Chanyeol’s eyes gleam.

 

“… I want you to know that,” Kyungsoo pauses, “I’m a bit cold and all. I’m a bit dark and all. I don’t have a superpower to match and all. But there’s a reason why I can still remember a few things. I can still remember the first kiss we had and you didn’t taste of smoke.”

 

Chanyeol gulps. 

 

“What did I taste like?” he prompts sheepishly.

 

“Like something I can’t really word out,” Kyungsoo answers softly. 

“Fire, perhaps,” Kyungsoo muses with a smile.

 

“You know, as much as I want you to stop smoking,” Kyungsoo starts but leaves hanging for a few seconds. “It’s not like I mind a lot. You smell awful good with it sometimes… I don’t know why,” Kyungsoo confesses. “Sometimes it’s like a part of you too. Your smoke is different.”

Chanyeol intertwines their fingers again.

 

“I like you too, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol blurts, and it takes the other by surprise. 

 

 

“I’m working on it,” Chanyeol reassures, holding onto the other’s hand tightly.

“I know,” Kyungsoo replies with a brief laugh.

 

 

 

 

 

“We’ll work this out together,” Kyungsoo says gently.

 _We’ll work this out together_ , Chanyeol repeats in his heart.


End file.
